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Dessert

Black-currant Jelly

A sweet preserve made from black currants, sugar, and optional water or juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Black-currant Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick each currant individually.

  2. Heat the currants in a jar set in boiling water.

  3. Squeeze the currants to extract the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine 1 pint of juice with 1 pound of sugar in a pot.

  2. Add a little water or red currant juice if desired.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  4. Alternatively, clarify the sugar, add whole fruit, and boil for 20 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture and boil for a few additional minutes.

Jar

  1. Pour into jars and seal when cool.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Supply the juice, flavour, acidity and natural pectin that help the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and, with the fruit's pectin and acid, helps it set into a firm gel.

The step that matters

Boil for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam. Enough boiling concentrates the sugar and lets the pectin and acid form a gel. Under-boiled jelly stays runny, while foam left on the surface can spoil the appearance and clarity.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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